I’m always up for giving Nick Clegg a pasting, but it’s a bit rich of ­stay-at-home mum Laura ­Perrins to tear into him over the Government’s decision to help families where both parents work.

In last week’s Budget it was announced these families will be given £1,200 a year to help with nursery fees – which is fantastic.

But not according to Ms Perrins, who attacked the Lib Dem boss on his radio show because mums who don’t work will get nothing.

“You probably think what I do is a worthless job,” she told him.

It should be pointed out here that Ms Perrins isn’t on the breadline.

In her own words she’s “relatively well off” and had a successful career as a barrister before she chose to give up work to look after her three-year-old daughter and her 12-month-old son.

The operative word here is CHOSE. She didn’t have to. She wasn’t made redundant. She made a choice based on what she and her husband thought was best for their family.

And they were able to do that for one very simple reason.

They can afford it. Millions of families would love the luxury of having one parent at home 24/7, but finances simply won’t allow it.

Laura Perrins DOES have the luxury of choice and it is not any government’s responsibility to fund those choices at a time Britain is looking down the barrel of a deficit that could ruin us all.

Ms Perrins reckons that the Government not giving cash to mums who stay at home is an attack on the “traditional family” and is “offensive”.

Doesn’t she know that in most “traditional” families women have always worked, either in low-paid or part-time jobs, and child care is their single biggest expense? And there’s nothing offensive about them getting help with that.

Of course, Ms Perrins is perfectly entitled to opt out of the workplace but it is her responsibility to bear the consequences of that, NOT the state’s. We have a welfare bill forecast to hit £200billion this year so why should it fund a well-off woman’s decision to stay at home? “If a mother chooses to stay at home she should be celebrated, not denigrated,” says Ms Perrins. Indeed she should.

But she shouldn’t expect to be supported by the state. In the same way governments shouldn’t have a duty to fund families who have upwards of 10 children and don’t work, they shouldn’t have to support those who can quite easily support themselves.

The welfare system exists to look after those in dire straits, not those who’ve made a lifestyle choice.

Methinks Ms Perrins needs to step outside the bubble in which she lives and take a long hard look at those desperate, hard-up families who don’t want to work but have to, who would love to earn what she’s capable of earning and chooses not to.

There’s no doubt this Government hurt many families when it snatched child ­benefit from those with incomes upwards of £50,000. But this is different and is in no way an attack on mums who stay at home and who clearly don’t need help with nursery fees... because they’re at home.

Ms Perrins belongs to a group called ­Mothers at Home Matter, which says it started “in the face of relentless social and economic pressure on mothers to return to work outside the home”.

Well, there’s NO economic pressure on her to go back to work, which is why she needs to stop moaning because it’s insulting to those mums on whom there is.

Why can't our jobless shift snow?

I’ve just come back from Moscow where it’s still snowing all day, every day.

Yet everything works – planes get de-iced before take-off, runways are cleared every couple of hours, snow ploughs are shifting snow off the roads 24/7 and in the city armies of burly, middle-aged women are on the streets shovelling snow and gritting pavements so they’re always clear.

And watching all these big women hard at work I started thinking about the outcry there’d be here if it was even suggested that the long-term unemployed should earn their benefits by helping keep cities moving in times of trouble.

The Human Rights brigade would be up in arms, there’d be frenzied shrieks about slave labour, indignity, persecution blah blah... When in fact all they’d be doing is earning the money the state gives them.

The hurt at the heart of Bill blunder

I like Bill Roache and I think everything he does is with the best of intentions.

However when people start saying that everyone, including paedophiles, is “pure love” and sex victims “bring it on themselves”, it really is time to dust off the white coats.

And I can’t help thinking that while Bill says he’s doing well after the tragic and incredibly sudden death of his wife Sara in 2009, maybe he isn’t doing quite as well as he thinks he is.

You never heard him spouting this type of loony-tunes stuff when she was around because she wouldn’t have let him damage himself in this way.

It seems like Bill Roache didn’t just lose Sara three years ago, he lost his grip on reality as well.

Is our crisis just a joke for Labour?

I don’t know whether last week’s Budget was a good one or a stinker.

Only time will tell.

What I do know is that by that by 2015 we will have the highest deficit of any Western economy and we are increasing our national debt by £18million an hour, which means we are in the midst of a genuine national crisis that no politician – Tory, Labour or Lib Dem – has the vaguest clue how to solve.

So how shameful that during Osborne’s speech, Labour MPs could be seen laughing, jeering and having a singalong about the country’s failings.

Do they think people living on the breadline is funny?

Do they think a steep decline in living standards for ordinary people is a joke?

Yes, the Coalition is making a pig’s ear of the recovery but does Labour imagine we will vote for a party that sees the collapse of this country simply as fodder for beating up the opposition?

Because laughing at and gloating the poorest and most vulnerable doesn’t show any real commitment to making it better.

It may be too early for Labour to have any proper policies, but couldn’t they at least pretend to be grown-up enough to lead a country... even if they’re not.

Tweet nothings for Gregg

I reckon it’s because if women met him in the flesh first they’d run a mile.

I did a TV show with “Three Wives Wallace” years ago when he was dating yet another ­vacuous popsie: “Sometimes I worry these young women only want to go out with me because I’m on the telly and I’ve got ­money,” said the man who loves himself so much if he was made of chocolate he’d eat himself.

I told him to stop worrying because he was right. That’s exactly why they go out with him.

Royals on the Tube? Next stop Barking

Is it just me who thinks there’s something incredibly patronising about the royals doing PR stunts on public transport?

Last week the Queen, Prince Philip and Kate all piled on to the Tube to celebrate its 150th anniversary. And it was only weeks ago that Charles and Camilla managed a one-stop trip on the Metropolitan line.

Trouble is, with the exception of Kate, none of them has ever, or will ever, use the Tube and their efforts to get down and dirty with us common folk just make them look more out of touch than ever.

The truth is that for Charles, Prince Philip and even the Queen, riding the Tube has to be much the same as being transported by an alien spaceship. And the bemused looks on their faces always register that. It’s like they’re thinking: “Good God is this really how the hoi polloi get to work? How bloody awful for them.”

_________________

I don’t hold out much hope of Downton’s Dan Stevens being a rip-roaring success as a Hollywood leading man.

The main reason movie bosses were interested in him in the first place was because he looked foppish and English and aristocratic.

Now he just looks haggard and chiselled and edgy… like every other?wanna­be?hunk?in Tinseltown.

OK, maybe 50 CAN be nifty

Thankyou for your emails about why being 50 is fab.

I'm still not convinced but I did laugh at those of you who said the only good thing about being 50 is that it isn't 60.

The winner is Brenda McGuire from Belfast who says: "What's great about being 50 is my wonderful intolerance of stupid people and stupid ideas, and not caring who cares. And it's about drinking champagne without counting the calories."

Hey, Brenda, soulds like you and I were separated at birth. Enjoy the bottle that's winging its way to you.